


His Girl

by listentothewordsyousay



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 12:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17828243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/listentothewordsyousay/pseuds/listentothewordsyousay
Summary: Claire is a combat medic who is left at the altar by Special Forces captain James Fraser.





	1. Chapter 1

The two silvery planes screamed over the desert; the combination of noise and speed dizzying. As the clouds of smoke rose between two of the peaks that framed the valley, Captain Fraser breathed a sigh of relief. His eyes were on the rough track road that wound along the plain. ‘Here come the cavalry. Armoured unit approaching. Let’s go, Private. Good work today.’

Claire Beauchamp tore her eyes away from the mountains and scrambled up from her position behind the rock. ‘Thanks, boss’.

As her eyes adjusted to the gloom of the covered truck, she let out her own small sigh of relief. He bumped her elbow. ‘I mean it, medic. You did well.’

‘Always does, that’s our girl,’ interjected Frank. Fraser fixed his eyes disapprovingly on Randall but made no comment, shifting back in his seat and pursing his lips. Claire was too tired to care about either one and their macho-man act. It had been a tough tour and this morning’s operation was typical of their time in Afghan; unpredictable, hot, dangerous and frustrating.

Back at base, she heaved herself off the truck and began to inventory the medical supplies left. She heard Fraser’s soft accent behind her. ‘I hear you’re off to Bastion next.’

She looked up. All the Special Forces boys were tall and broad, but Fraser dominated even among them. He was beautifully made, with sharp cheekbones and deep blue eyes, and he knew it. 

‘So, I just wondered, maybe, if you wanted to see me when we get back to the UK?’ He wound up his speech and affected nonchalance, shrugging his hands into his pockets.

She pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘No.’

‘No?! No one says no to me!’ He really did look mildly taken aback. She resolved to keep a straight face.

‘The golden rule in life is,’ she twirled her finger at him before pointing it at him with a smile. ‘Never go out with a soldier’.

‘That applies to squaddies only, surely,’ he said gamely, leaning on the truck beside her. ‘You can’t count Special Forces in that.’

She chuckled. He was charming, she had to hand it to him.

‘Come on, give me your number.’

‘I’m not your type, Fraser’.

Nevertheless, six months later, she found herself standing in utter shock in a wedding dress in a church in the Highlands, feeling like she was hurtling through time as a tall soldier in number ones looked sympathetically down at her and said the words: ‘he can’t go through with it, Claire…. I’m sorry’. 

She stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, she heard her heart break.

It was a small clean sound, like the snapping of a flower’s stem.

\----inspired by BBC’s Our Girl----


	2. Chapter 2

–Two Years Later–

Her days seemed interminable. She felt like she lived in a separate time zone from everyone else; trudging through regimental duties and berating new recruits on their appalling knowledge of anatomy with her usual precision, but no heart.

‘He can’t go through with it,’ John Grey had said. She did credit him for having the decency to look ashamed, awkwardly standing ramrod straight as she had collapsed into the arms of her beloved Uncle Lamb. 

Now John Grey was standing in front of her again, his number ones replaced by multi terrain fatigues. He smiled warmly down at her as she stood at attention. ‘How have you been?

‘Good, thanks’. He quirked an eyebrow in polite disbelief before motioning her to sit down.

‘I’m going to Kenya. Humanitarian outreach project in the refugee camps on the Somali border.’

It was her turn to quirk an eyebrow.

‘I need a medic. Experienced… top of the range, fully loaded… I’ve had a word with your CO and he thinks it’s a sound idea.’ He had not taken his eyes off her. ‘Six weeks, you’ll be back by Christmas. Think it over, let me know in the morning.’

He stood to go.

‘I can say yes now, sir.’

———————–

As she fell into bed after her first day in the Kenyan camp, she felt a sense of being awaken in herself again. The fog had cleared and the clock had seemed to start again. She had helped, she had learned, she had taught, she had felt pleasure in medicine again. She was tired, she was hot, she was alive.

‘Are you decent, medic?’ ‘Yes, boss, come in.’

‘Do you have any paracetamol?’ 

She suspected that it was a front and it was. As she turned to get Grey water and after sun, he continued to speak. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Beauchamp. I was worried you might say no because of the friends I keep.’

She missed a beat. The night was still and silent, bar the laughs of the boys outside. Then she pulled herself together.

‘You can say his name, you know, he’s not Voldemort.’ The bravado made Grey laugh. ‘He is a tosser though.’

‘But he’s your mate.’ He slowly nodded. ‘He… he should have done more. Did he ever…”

She could not and would not show weakness. ‘I’ve moved on, boss. Let’s just… get on with the tour, yeah?’


	3. Chapter 3

The helicopter hovered gently over the ground as the platoon jumped out, throwing their bergens on their backs. Through the clouds of dust, Jamie recognised the tall, lean figure at the gates. He held a hand up in recognition and strode purposefully towards him.

‘Grey. Glad to see you mate,’ he said, clapping his friend on the back.

‘Here’s your brief,’ he said grimly, holding out the classified envelope.

Jamie lifted his eyebrows. ‘Nice to see you too, mate, long time,’ he muttered sarcastically, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the sunlight.

His bravado melted into a frozen pit in his stomach as he saw Claire’s face stare back at him. She was young in the photograph, serious, her curly hair tied severely off her face. He lifted it to see the details underneath, his finger tracing her cheek gently.

‘It’s Claire,’ said Murtagh unnecessarily.

‘From now on, she’s referred to as the Primary,’ snapped Jamie.

‘You fucking know it can’t be you,’ interjected Grey. ‘You’re too close.’

‘There’s no time,’ he retorted. ‘Taken by this cell, she’s got till sundown tomorrow. I’m not fucking leaving without her.’

Throughout the day Grey repeatedly cursed the gods and the higher ups for putting Jamie in charge of the mission. He had analysed every snippet of information given to him, demanded more intel from any source and patrolled the ops room like a wild animal, periodically insisting that they go now.

John finally cornered him. ‘Is your head in the game?’

‘I’m getting her back,’ Jamie snarled. ‘I owe her that much.’

‘Then this mission is fucking textbook. I don’t want to hear of you giving it all James Bond.’

Jamie scoffed. ‘I’m getting her back, and I’m explaining everything.’

‘You broke her heart.’

‘Then it’s my duty to mend it.’ He finally gave in to his baser instincts and kicked the table. ‘Fuck’s sake.’


	4. Chapter 4

Claire didn’t hear the paratrooper bellow ‘move’ at her, but she knew what he was commanding her to do. She had known they would look for her. 

That knowledge didn’t negate the complete and utter fear which had filled every inch of her soul since the camp ambulance she had been in had been hijacked. Her body had seemed to cope better, moving independently of her mind at times, a testament to the training she had been through. Now she felt herself stumbling into the sunlight towards the soldier, automatically shielding herself behind him as he scanned the courtyard. 

The helicopter was roaring above them, raising whorls of reddy dust, the shots were ringing around the compound. She grasped her safety harness and felt the arms and legs of the soldier circle round her, the helicopter’s pull swaying them as they rose. Her eyes were stinging with the dirt, the dust and the blazing sunlight, the tears running down her face as she looked into the compound, littered with bodies and blood. His hand was resting on her shoulder.

There were other hands and arms at the doors waiting to grab her, approvingly slapping her back and shouting ‘you’re alright now,’ and ‘well done Medic’, above the engine’s roar. Her saviour was yelling into his radio. She thought that she could hear him now.

This is zero alpha,’ he continued, a Scottish accent tinging the rs. ‘Extraction complete, primary recovered. REPEAT. Primary recovered.’

As he spoke, he pulled off his goggles and unwound the khaki scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth. 

Jamie stopped comms and looked at her, clear blue eyes brighter than usual with a tan rising high on his slanted Viking cheekbones. ‘All is well in the world’.

Claire summoned the rest of her strength to aim a look of complete disdain at him. Her hands trembled in her lap and she gripped the seat, looking anywhere but at him. Fuck. 

‘Bruising, laceration, dehydration. CT scan and x-ray on return,’ concluded the medic examining her, smiling at her. 

‘Where are we going?’

‘Mombasa. Is your vision okay?’ 

‘No,’ she retorted. ‘I can still see him’.

It was gross insubordination and she knew it, but she felt in the circumstances, it was justified.


	5. Chapter 5

He seemed enormous in the hospital ward, standing guard by her door and shedding the desert dust onto the pristine corridor floor as he paced. Eventually it was John Grey who persuaded him to leave, posting two squaddies on Claire’s door until she was discharged with two days R&R.

The boys in her unit roared their approval as she walked through the doors of the hotel complex before cheerfully ripping her to shreds. ‘Did they get fed up of you ordering them around, Beauchamp?’ ‘Nah, they thought she was a royal, with that accent! Life of luxury, so it was!’ She laughed and batted them away, kissing Sergeant Duncan on the cheek.

‘We red misted that wanker for you anyway,’ remarked Murtagh quietly, at Jamie’s right hand as always. They were slightly behind her own section at the reception stairwell, arms folded as they surveyed the welcome committee. She nodded sharply at him. ‘Got off easy, if you ask me. Gone in a second.’

Jamie frowned. ‘He’s still got to face his God.’

She stood still, looking up at him and his broad-good humoured face. She had always found it peculiar; that this man who travelled the globe killing people for a living could remain so closely attached to the faith of his childhood. He could look angelic, bent to prayer, long eyelashes gracing his cheeks. The slight dent in his long nose, where it had been broken, was the only indication that he was perfectly capable of causing absolute mayhem. 

She was too tired for deep thinking. She was especially too tired to think about him and the pain he had already caused her. She shook her head slowly and closed her eyes. ‘Not now, Jamie.’ She turned to walk away from him

‘There’s none so deaf as those who will not hear,’ he remarked bitterly, deliberately loud. She responded by slamming the door at the top with all her might.

‘You,’ said John Grey conversationally, ‘are a monumental bellend.’ Jamie looked affronted. ‘You’ve just swooped in and rescued her. She might have thought of you as something good, instead remembering all the crap you put her through.’

Jamie only hummed in response, the tune something that may have been understanding.


	6. Chapter 6

There was only one seat left and it was beside Jamie. Claire immediately discarded the idea of not drinking and grabbed a beer, turning herself towards the rest of the group. It was their last evening in Kenya before returning to the UK for debriefing and decompression. Grey had unearthed a clutch of beer rations and an impromptu sing song had started around the beach campfire.

The evening haze was pleasantly hot, bathing her arms and legs in heat as she looked up at the navy blue sky. Her heart lurched as she remembered the night she had spent with Jamie at a beer garden in Edinburgh. He had leaned in close to her and whispered the English words of the Gaelic folk music in her ears, tales of faery women and magical lands. She drank from the bottle and pressed the cold glass against her chest.

‘Y’alright love?’ said Angus quietly. She nodded. ‘This job, isn’t it?’ He drank to that. ‘Speak to the psychologist,’ he advised. ‘Don’t do the ‘I’m fine’ thing. The things we see.. you can’t unsee them.’ She smiled sadly at him. ‘And you’ve seen, I think.’ He clapped her on the back and wandered off.

‘I’m going to give Jamie the honour of picking the next song,’ announced Grey loudly, swaying slightly as he stood. ‘Given that he is a full time mad bastard and my best mate. Don’t pick Oasis or I’ll fling you off a cliff.’

Claire smiled at Grey, who was one beer away from an Elton John medley and turned to look at Jamie, resting her chin on her hands. He motioned Murtagh over and said something under his breath.

‘TUNE!’ yelled Angus appreciatively, as Murtagh began with the opening words of Many of Horror. Their wedding song. Jamie looked directly at Claire, his eyes yearning for her own.

She pursed her lips. She was not crying in front of the boys. ‘I’m off,’ she said, to no one in particular. ‘Need to chill.’

The combination of medication and beer had done the trick. She fell into the deepest sleep she had had since before she was taken, waking up only when a heavy door banged in the corridor. It was late, but still swelteringly hot. She needed air, she thought, pulling her hair into a bun and slipping out to the balcony.

‘Dinnae turn around.’ His accent always came out when he was drunk. She was close to sobbing. She wasn’t able to cope with this just now.

‘It’s always been forever for me Claire. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you and I’ll love you to the moment I die.’ She did turn around then. It was consolation to see the futility and exhaustion that she felt reflected on his own face.

‘I felt like when I met you, the sun came out. And then, the morning of our wedding, this little lad walked into my life. I swear Claire, I knew nothing about him until that morning. All I wanted to do was to run to you and there I was with this bairn in my arms. I had to step up and do my duty by him.’


	7. Chapter 7

He had turned away from her now. ‘Did you not have a duty to me?’ she hissed, gesturing wildly between them.

‘Yes! Yes, I did’- ‘but you shat on me instead,’ she interrupted, not caring that this was the closest to a breakdown she had ever seen him.

He could only grimace and nod in agreement. He rubbed the back of his hand over his face. ‘I’m sorry. So sorry Claire.’

‘Are you… together?’ she asked finally.

‘No. I have William whenever I can but Leoghaire… she’s not for me Claire.’

‘You should have told me.’

‘I…. I can bear pain myself but I couldn’t bear yours. It wasn’t the life I had promised you.’

She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her face in agony.

‘Ye’re tearing my guts out Claire. You… you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved and I don’t know how to make you believe me…"

The question hung in the air between them, shimmering like the reflection from the water below.

“Only you,” he said, so softly she could barely hear him. “To worship ye with my body, give ye all the service of my hands. To give ye my name, and all my heart and soul with it. Only you.’

He turned them, back into his own room, as Claire held onto the metal railing, the tears dropping like rain. She gulped and ran her hand across her face, blowing out in the summer air before making her decision.

She knocked quietly on the door, but it was ajar. He was lying on the bed, his arms flung above his head. She sat softly beside him and laid her hand on his chest.

‘You aren’t alone any more,’ she whispered.


	8. Chapter 8

It was the smell. It was back again. She tried to breath deeply, clear her mind, take in the clean, fresh air. Then cell and the darkness closed around her, as they did before the noises started. The shots and the screams and the terrible, terrible sounds of the compound.

Claire jerked awake, gasping for breath, her hands trembling uncontrollably. She lifted her hands up to her hair, running them through the curls, looking around. The boys were playing football on the sand, making the most of the morning cool. She sat up properly, resting her palms on the crown of her head, trying to force her lungs into obedience. She closed her eyes again, breathing through her nose.

‘Gargle, love?’ asked Rupert, wandering by with a beer in hand. She shook her head.

‘You alright?” he asked, with genuine concern.

‘Getting there,’ was her only reply. He had smiled sympathetically at her, and wandered off. She laughed shortly. Things had to be really bad when he hadn’t invited her to cheer herself up by spending some quality personal time with him.

The thought of Jamie consequently slammed into her brain, as she saw herself putting her hand on his chest, winding her fingers through his curls and leaning forward until her nose had touched his.

Shite.

He had fallen asleep with his arms around her. She had lain beside him for a long time, watching his profile in the dim moonlight and listening to his steady, even breathing. He had made her forget, until her brain had returned to the day which previously haunted her sleep, the day of orange blossoms and white silk in the Highlands.

She had gently untangled herself, dressed, and slipped out of his room.

————————-

Jamie stood on the paved slabs above the beach, pensively watching her. He had thought she was his again, until he had woken up to an empty bed and a sore head. ‘Nairobi calling, Fraser,’ shouted Murtagh, one foot up on the step of the truck.

‘CLAIRE,’ he yelled, whistling with his fingers.

The tiny, dark haired figure on the sunbed turned around.

He lifted his fingers to his lips and blew her a kiss, lifting his hand in salute to his girl.

But she turned away, back and shoulders straight, letting his kisses flow out to the wide, glittering blue sea.


	9. Chapter 9

— Six Months Later—

She had her rituals to observe. She wiggled her toes, adjusted her headset and seatbelt, and pulled on her gloves tightly. She ran her fingertips along the top of her rifle. Ready. She liked to be one of the first on board. It helped her calm her nerves. Others needed to feel the sunlight and air on their faces until the last moment, although they were now being herded in and prepared for take- off. Time to go.

Only the group of Special Forces were outside, conferring quietly among themselves. She took one last deep breath and looked up.

Fuck.

Captain Jamie Fraser stood on the tarmac, bronze arms folded, looking straight at her with his impossibly blue eyes. He slapped the side of the aircaft and headed for the seat beside her.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said breezily.

‘It wasn’t for your benefit,’ she answered pleasantly. He made a Scottish noise in the back of his throat and continued nonetheless. ‘Glad you’re my medic though. I needed a good one.’

She gave him a look of utter disdain. ‘Have you ever heard John Grey do his impression of you? He puts on a red wig and says ‘me me me me me me’. It’s uncanny.’

He snorted, patted her knee and moved away to his assigned seat.

——————

The operation was complete. They had successfully identified and removed the target, although they had encountered live fire and the target had been badly wounded. ‘Must be one tough bugger,’ remarked the captain of the medevac team as Claire completed handover. She blew out and nodded at him, stripping off her blue plastic gloves.

Jamie was standing alone, watching her from the edge of the group. She headed over to him. ‘Target should make it,’ she informed him. ‘Stabilised and headed back to Cyprus.’ He unclipped his helmet strap and smiled. ‘Is that you, or him?’ She rolled her eyes and turned away from him. He’d never change.

‘Claire,’ he said quietly. She turned again, watching him clear his throat and rub his nose. ‘I just wanted you to know,’ he said slowly, looking down at the sand and clearly considering his words.

‘Jamie,’ she said firmly, chin up, fixing her eyes on his face. ‘I just want you to know. I’m not interested.’ He looked back at her, before shrugging his shoulders and looking over to the rest of the section. She continued. ‘I’ve got my job, and that’ll do me for now.’

‘Well, I don’t believe that and I don’t think you do either.’ He bounced on the soles of his boots before turning to look at her again.

She didn’t dignify him with a response.


	10. Chapter 10

It had all gone Pete Tong. Spectacularly. Claire didn’t know how any of them were still alive, let alone Jamie. And yet, there he stood, covered in blood and sand, grimly calm as the support helicopter came into view.

She paced up and down beside the wounded men, her hands betraying her nerves with tremors. He headed in her direction, ostensibly to tell her that they were five minutes out. As she saw him, the choking sobs finally escaped, and she lifted her hands to her face, turning away from the eyes of the prying squaddies. He gently put one hand on her shoulder, the other on her elbow to turn her towards him.

‘You’re alright,’ he said gently, drawing her into the shade of the wall.

‘This fucking place,’ she whispered, wiping away the tears with shaky fingers. ‘I thought it was you and not Murtagh.’

‘At least we know you don’t want me dead anymore,’ he said, raising his eyes to the clouds to watch the helicopter’s descent.

She had recovered enough by now to smile wobbily and pretend to be bold. ‘Don’t get excited. It’s a very low bar.’

He chuckled obligingly, but stopped her from moving off with one firm hand on her elbow. He stopped laughing now, running one dirty, bloody hand through his hair. ‘You were right. About me. It… I wasn’t fair. I didn’t do my duty. I tore out your heart and made you live with it.’ There was a vein in his left cheek which pulsed as he spoke, his eyes dark with passion.

She looked down to the ground, her hair beginning to blow in front of her face with the power of the helicopter’s blades. His hand still rested on her elbow.

‘I don’t think we’re done. I’m still in love with you.’ He stopped and licked his lips, breathing heavily as the dust flew around them. ‘If you say you don’t… I’ll go… I‘d endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you – if that’s my punishment, Claire, fuck knows, I’ve earned it.’ His grip tightened. ‘But I love you.’

She moaned softly and swept her hair away, pressing her finger on a spot of dust near her eye to pick it off her face.

‘Loving each other was never the problem Jamie.’

She waited for him to retort, to question her on any other man, to tell her to choose him because neither of them could be whole alone. But the helicopter had landed, and it was time to go.


	11. Chapter 11

There was something in the air. Senior staff turned deadly serious, striding around the base in a state of hyper tension. Moreover, Special Forces had disappeared. Claire had periodically felt Jamie lurking around the medical facility as she worked, until she suddenly looked up and realised he had gone. Forcing herself to compartmentalise, she had worked until the doctor clocked her hours. Then she was forced to wait, miserably, counting down yet more hours until the helicopter touched down on the airfield, and then until debriefing had completed.

She had smiled at him and fallen into step with him on his way out, knowing he’d be the last to leave. He had smiled back, then looked down at the ground, his ears blushing like a boy’s.

‘There’s moments, aren’t there,’ he said seriously. She lifted an eyebrow. ‘Like a photograph. When there’s just… clarity. Moments you just want to stop time in.’

She blushed herself and bit her lip, thinking of the nights she had spent wrapped in his arms, where he had made time stop in ways she couldn’t share with anyone else. He mistook her intake of breath for laughter.

It had been a long time since he had held her hand, but he did it now. ‘Come here. Listen to me, I’m being sincere here.’ She took a step nearer him, meeting his eyes with her own in the gloom of the night.

‘I mean it, Claire. My life, it’s yours. Yours to decide, where we go and what we do after this. I can do selection, training.’ He dipped his head to look her straight in the eye.

‘And stay at home with the babies while I go on tour?’ she teased.

He moved in closer, grinning. ‘We having bairns now?’ 

‘Come here,’ she whispered, snaking one hand onto his neck and pulling him near to her, the other tracing the line of his collar. His broad, warm hands circled her back, pulling them nearer each other as his tongue sought her mouth.

‘Never,’ she whispered, pulling gently back, ‘let me down again.’

His breath was hot on her cheek and forehead. ‘I never will.’

————–fin————-


End file.
